Mark Evans wrote:
> How to write out a string of text using a proportional font, then
> connect given letters by means of geometric lines. The lines may
> cross over one another, have different colors, or different dashings.
>
> Example:
>
> This is a proportional font
> | | | || |
> | | | || |
> | ---------------- |
> | | |
> ---------------------------
>
> In general, the font may include characters that, although their ASCII
> codes appear in a particular string order, their position on screen
> may
> appear above, below, or even on top of the previous or subsequent
> letter. For instance, the sequential ASCII code for the string
> "ABCDEF" might end up being printed as
>
> F
> ABDE
> C
>
> The layout properties are determined by the font, so I am not sure
> that Mathematica's superscript/subscript system is useful here.
You can do some very nice and powerful things using GridBox and
StyleBox. E.g., try
DisplayForm[StyleBox[GridBox[{{"", "", "", "F"},
{"A", "B", "D", "E"}, {"", "C", "F", ""}}],
GridBoxOptions ->
{RowMinHeight -> 0, RowSpacings -> 0,
ColumnSpacings -> 0}]]
Some examples appeared in The Mathematica Journal 7(1).
Cheers,
Paul
____________________________________________________________________
Paul Abbott Phone: +61-8-9380-2734
Department of Physics Fax: +61-8-9380-1014
The University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6907
mailto:paul@physics.uwa.edu.au AUSTRALIA
http://www.pd.uwa.edu.au/~paul
God IS a weakly left-handed dice player
____________________________________________________________________